Author: ianwar26

In tech we have been learning about circuits. On an app called Nearpod we have been learning about different ways to make lightbulbs light up in a circuit. We use virtual batteries as a power source and wires, resistors and many other items to create our circuits.  Later we are going to be making circuits using cardboard and aluminum foil. We would use aluminum foil as a conductor to push power to a little light, so it would light up. These are 2 very different types of circuits but they o the same thing.

in tech so far we have been making wire pendants. So far we have been bending wire into circles with a loop on top so we can make it into jewelry. We have been using a mandrill to make the outside circle of the pendant, round nose pliers to hold the wire in place without scratching it and wire cutters to cut the wire. I am making. Star design in my pendent so I use 5 little bended pieces of wire to make the star design. After I have all the pieces ready, I can solder all the pieces to the outer wire ring. After i make my first I probably will make  one more with a lightning bolt design, but so far I am still finishing up my first one.

The last few lessons in tech have been all about atoms. 3 days ago we learned what atoms are. Atoms are really tiny things that almost everything is made out of. Atoms are the building blocks of the whole world. 2 days ago we learned about how big and small our universe is. Space is huge. It is so big that there are billions of universes just like ours. We are so tiny compared to all that. We are also huge. If the whole world was made of blueberries, that would be how many atoms are in a grapefruit. 1 day ago we learned about how we found out about atoms. Basically there were a bunch of guys who were really wrong about how the world works until this one guy, Queen Elizabeths doctor, guessed that everything is made out of tiny pieces of itself. Which was partly correct, everything is made out of something tiny, atoms,  but the there aren’t enough atoms for everything to have its own kind of atom. For example, there isn’t a water atom, there is hydrogen and oxygen, which create H2O, the water molecule. We did an experiment about how electrons are attracted to protons be rubbing a piece of wool on a PVC pipe and holding it up to a metal antenna which was connected to 2 pieces of aluminum foil, the whole thing covered in a glass container. When we held the pipe to the antenna the foil pieces would lift up. This is because the wool’s electrons get transferred to the PVC pipe and they get moved to the antenna. The PVC pipe is now only protons so the electrons in the foil get attracted to the pipe. I found atoms so interesting and it changed the way I look at things.

In tech we were doing an activity called Breakout Edu, where there was 2 teams and each team was trying to open a box that had safety glasses in. The box was locked by a direction lock, word lock, and number lock. We had to find clues and the clues showed us how to open the locks. The clues were easy to find but it was hard to interpret them and open the locks. There was also a bonus box which had a clue in it to open the bigger box.  Mr Calvert also could give us bonus clues but we only had 2 of them. My team found all our clues within the first 10 mins but it took us all the time to figure out how to open the locks. My team didn’t think we needed to open the bonus box because it would take up our time so after some time we got the direction lock off.  We used the maze clue to open it bay moving the lock in the directions e needed to go in the maze. We asked Mr. Calvert for a bonus clue and he told us that safety is the 1st priority. We used the word first to open the word lock and we used the plugs from the maze clue to open the number lock. We opened the box and found all the safety glasses. We had a lot of time left over so we used our last bonus clue to open the bonus box just for fun. But the other team got to it first so they opened the bonus box just as the others in their team opened their locked box. The bonus box had a black light flashlight that if you shone on one of the clues, had a circle drawn around the word ‘1st’ in safety is the first priority. I had a lot of fun doing breakout and I think it would be really fun to do it again.